my journey with the barefoot horse

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The Barefaced Ban

Riders have hit back at ludicrous claims in a national magazine which said barefoot horses were prone to slipping and rarely left the schooling arena.

A letter in The Showing Journal sparked the row and prompted the Barefoot Horse Owners Group on Facebook to write back shouting ‘nonsense’.

Here’s the original letter and the editor’s response so you can see it for yourself.

Sadly, these opinions have their grip on the world of showing at the moment. Barefoot horses are banned from many hunter classes because judges, who ironically often wear the traditional bowler hat with no strap rather than a safety helmet, refuse to ride animals without shoes. They fear they are not safe; they will slip and so won’t let them in the ring.

I’m a lover of irony and there’s more of it in this story – you can hunt barefoot or shod, risking your neck over treacherous ground and high hedges – but you can’t enter the hallowed, but safe, show arena and do a few circuits of the level grass on a show hunter without shoes.

And yet barefoot horses are succeeding in many more dangerous equine sports. Our members are competing in endurance, cross country and show jumping and their horses are winning rosettes rather than falling all over the place. Just take a look at Claire Alldritt’s story of her journeys across Scotland on a barefoot animal – here’s a link to my earlier blog.

Becky Chapman, pictured below, is another wonderful example. She was a winner before the ban on a talented heavyweight show hunter called Mac at a very muddy Horse of the Year Show in 2008 – she says he was the only horse that wasn’t slipping!

She explains: ‘I stopped competing due to the stupidity of the ban and my disillusionment with that world. Due to ethical reasons I no longer compete either of my wonderful barefoot mares.’

Once a horse has recovered from the damaging effects of shoeing, he fares much better in wet conditions than his shod companions. He is far superior in the snow and there is a greatly reduced risk of tendon and ligament injuries without the anchoring effect of a metal shoe. Less damage from concussion, too. Frankly, the ban is a mystery. Bowler hats are traditional and allowed; barefoot is very definitely neither.

My letter from the Barefoot Horse Owners Group managed to appear on The Showing Journal’s Facebook page until it was removed along with other pro-barefoot responses. The only answer I’ve had so far was an email from the editor thanking me and looking forward to receiving my letter. A comment from the Showing Journal on Facebook – which has also been taken down – acknowledged that both barefoot and shod horses have been known to slip.

There is a similar oddity in the world of dressage with its hostility to riders who choose bitless – see my earlier blog A Bit Much. Did I say hostility? Well, they actually ban bitless horses.

No wonder there is so much talk among the barefoot-and-bitless community about establishing events separately from the traditional competition circuit. More news of this in a later blog…

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A Barefoot Journey, my honest and light-hearted account of going barefoot – including the mistakes, the falls, the triumphs and the nightmares! A small-but-perfectly-formed field companion to my novel The First Vet. Available onAmazon UK and Amazon US – paperback for £2.84 and Kindle for 99p. The First Vet, historical romance inspired by the life and work of the amazing early vet, Bracy Clark – the man who exposed the harm of shoeing 200 years ago! Paperback price £6.99, Kindle £2.24 –Amazon UK. Amazon US. This book, which has more than 30 five-star reviews and a recommend from the Historical Novel Society, sold out at the prestigious international show at Hickstead! Still available on Amazon though…

Many thanks to reader Nicola Jones for this lovely feedback – ‘After reading your Barefoot Journey I have finally found the confidence and the oomph to go it alone! I plucked up the courage to ask a local farmer if he had a field for me.. and he does! I feel no fear, just excitement at getting my relationship (with my horses) back on track.’